


Tui and La

by louisaeve



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Avatar State, Bending (Avatar), F/F, Gen, bsc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-04
Updated: 2013-09-04
Packaged: 2017-12-25 14:38:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/954298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/louisaeve/pseuds/louisaeve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of course Sansa was the Avatar. Of course. Because Arya was just some dumpy earthbender, while Sansa was the fucking Avatar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tui and La

**Author's Note:**

> see end for triggers

They've always been different. 

Sansa was a water bender like their mother, and she was fluid and graceful and changing. 

Arya was a earth bender and she's always been stubborn and firm and full of substance. 

They're not opposites though. They grew up too close to one another. Water and fire are opposites, and earth and air are opposites. The pair are even next to one another in the Avatar cycle. 

But when Sansa turns sixteen, and Arya remains thirteen, everything changes. 

The wise women of the water tribe approach Sansa, and they lie the relics of the Avatar's before her in front. "They're just toys!" Arya cries out, interrupting. "It doesn't prove anything!" 

But Sansa packs her things, and heads to the Northern Water Tribe where she is to master her water bending. 

Robb and even Jon, and Bran and Rickon, and their parents embrace her, but Arya turns away, heads to the coldest point along the coast and stabs at the few fish who swim by with her spear, scowling. She herself will wait another year to learn to master earth bending, stuck on this little empty place where she can barely bend, even in summer. Of course Sansa's the Avatar though. Because everything is perfect for Sansa. After all, she was born a water bender in the Southern Water Tribe, instead of a fucking earth bender. 

Arya scowls and turns away from the world, huddling to herself and lies back when the sun disappears, watching the bright stars that light the sky and ignoring the cold ache in her back. 

_

Sansa finds that the Northern Water Tribe is even colder than the southern. 

There is a monarchy here - a real monarchy with princes and princesses, kings and queens, and an icy palace. There is engravings and decorations, and at the welcoming feast the King hosts, she is given a bracelet made of a pendant attached to a ribbon, which she ties around her wrist, and smiles sweetly, thanking him for all of his generosities. She bows to the King and the Queen and is introduced to a man, Sandor Clegane, with whom she will be instructed by. He's a water bending master, the King says, but Sansa's eyes catch over the horrible burn over his face, and thinks perhaps he got into a fight that he came out of lucky, or perhaps an accident, a childhood one, but she is still well mannered, even if she feels very lower class compared to the Northern Water Tribe folk, and so she says nothing. 

When she arrives the next morning, having slept in clothes the Rrincess Myrcella had arranged for her to be given, sleeping on the cold slab of ice covered in the softest of polar furs (what served as a bed here in the north), she sees that none of her peers are girls, but all boys. 

Her bending has been self taught mostly, with the help of the few other water benders in her village that serves as a nation, as there was not a lot of time for non practical times, and with the lack of benders in the southern tribe, water bending has been seen as such. 

To her surprise however, the master does not allow her to show off her fighting, but instead sends her to a small building. When she enters, she finds that it is for the women, and seats herself next to the princess, whom has coated her small hands in water that is now glowing, healing a bruise on the leg of a small girl. 

"Welcome," the woman smiles at Sansa. "The Avatar?"

"Yes," Sansa smiles politely. "Master Sandor sent me."

"Welcome to the art of healing then," the woman smiles once more, and continues about instructing the girls in healing. 

Although Sansa knew that healing was an ability most water benders possessed, she had never fully understood how precisely. But by the end of the lesson, she has learnt enough that she is able to heal the boy who has run from the water bending practice with Master Sandor, and walks him back, after thanking her teacher. 

Sansa is a unsure as to what she is meant to do, and bows when Master Sandor notices her. "Master, I have completed my lesson," she says to the man, and waits for his response. 

"Then you will go back tomorrow at the same time," Master Sandor instructs, watching two of the boys battle. 

"But - the healer said I had learnt all I would need to," Sansa says to the Master. "She said I had completed healing, and that my bending was very good, enough to move on." 

"In the water tribe women do not learn how to bend other than healing," Master Sandor grunts out, and Sansa gasps. 

"But I'm - I'm the Avatar!" Sansa splutters out. "How am I supposed to bring peace if I can't master my own element?"

"Don't ask me," Master Sandor grunts once more, and Sansa flees the sight, as the boys in the lesson take to giggling.

_

Arya is so very bored on this little ice island that she calls home. Summer is coming, sure, but it's coming long and slow. She needs the earth and the reassurance it brings, needs the protection, but it's still cold, and she can feel it in her bones. 

Her mother is constantly ordering her to do things now Sansa is gone, and her father has gone off for protection in the upcoming war, along with Robb and Jon. 

So it's just her and her mother and Rickon and Bran now, and Bran is still a child, and Rickon can't move, so she ends up stitching and sewing and cooking and cleaning and she's terrible at all of it. 

So in the meantime, while she can't bend, she learn how to use a boomerang and grasps her spear when she goes fishing and teaches herself how to hunt better than ever, and learns how to aim a dagger and make sure it hits the heart of a man every single time. 

So sure, Sansa might be learning, but Arya is too. 

_

When Myrcella found Sansa, she'd been weeping so long that her skin was even paler than normal and her eyes were bright red. 

After Sansa explained what had happened, even Myrcella was shocked. "But . . . but you're the Avatar!" The younger girl had exclaimed. 

"I know," Sansa murmured. 

When she woke up the next morning, she washed her face and ate the food that was brought to her. With a sigh she finally fixed her hair, looking at a sheet of ice, pinning a braid back. 

Walking towards the healers tent, Sansa was suddenly consumed by a sudden rage. She could fucking heal already. Drawing herself up, Sansa stalked towards the training area, with her hands in fists by her sides. "Master Sandor!" She called out across he training room, and all of a sudden she's stomping and her cheeks are flaming red. "I am ready to learn how to waterbed!" She calls out to him, a frown placed on her pouted lips. 

"Women do not water bend," he calls back, and Sansa burns red, drawing herself up to an even greater height than she already stands at. 

"The Avatar water bends!" Sansa calls, and she is so very angry. "I am the Avatar!" And she never really felt like the Avatar before, she was still Sansa Stark, but now she's angry and burning and angry. 

"Leave child!" Master Sandor calls. "Either you learn healing or leave!"

And then Sansa looses herself, and all around her the people draw back, for she is floating above the ground, and her eyes are glowing. "You will teach me to water bend," a man's voice speaks through her, as her body is transformed to his, a man in fire nation clothing. "I have master water bending hundreds of timesaver , and I shall do it hundreds of times more." 

And then the man - Sansa - raises their arms, and droplets of water float into the air, and she - they - release the water with a sudden flick, and rain comes down on all those who are not the Avatar. 

Master Sandor cowers in front of her, before nodding and murmuring pleading words.

The Avatar fades, and Sansa slumps. 

_

When the men return from their hunting trip, Arya's father is not with them.

Indeed, Ned Stark, chief of the Southern Water Tribe has been killed. 

Catlyn Stark cries and pleads and cries and pleads once more praying to Tui and La, the Ocean and Moon Spirits, from the Northern Water Tribe she hails from. 

Arya hacks apart fish on the icy bank, staining the ice red with their blood, and cuts her own finger, and vows for revenge even as Robb sets sail with the same goal in mind. 

The Starks are becoming fewer by the minute. 

_

Sansa learns water bending, and she masters it quickly. 

Queen Cersei hisses as she walks by, and the Prince takes to murmuring sweet words to her. Master Sandor will not look her in the eyes, and King falls ill. 

On the twenty fifth day of Sansa's stay in the Northern Water Tribe, the King passes away, and the prince takes charge of the Kingdom. Her brother is leading a war outside walls of the Northern Water Tribe, or at least planning to, and her bedroom doors are closed. Sansa practices her bending and her healing while she waits, and thinks about learning earth bending and how it will be difficult. 

On the twenty sixth day, Prince Joffrey enters her rooms, and Sansa greets him with a smile, and bows to him, although she has a feeling that even royalty are meant to bow to the Avatar. To her surprise, he strikes her across the face and speaks violent, bitter angry words. 

He leaves her on the floor, and she heals herself. 

It repeats for five more days, but then it is the full moon, and Sansa packs a bag, sneaks out of her chambers, kisses Myrcella goodbye as she sleeps, and attempts to sneak out of the palace.

She has to knock three men out, and her gut wrenches, but she finds a boat, slips into it with her bag and sleeping bag and extra clothes, stands up, and bends her way to land, headed for Omashu. 

_

Arya travels by the night, and meets a man who is an earth bender like she has never seen. 

She's run away, long before her time, and she regrets leaving her mother, and her brothers, but she needs to do something, anything otherwise she's going to go mad. So she runs away and meets a man who earth bends like no one else she's ever met, or seen. 

They sit meditating for hours, and Arya's patience is severely tested because she is not a patient person and this is fucking worse than making fish stew. But she wants to be able to do something and so she sits and fucking meditates and ignores the fact that as always, Sansa will be running around bending every fucking element because she's the fucking Avatar. 

_

Sansa asks the guards at the gates of Omashu to take her to the King. 

At first they laugh and ask why they should take a mere teenage girl to the King, but then she states she is the Avatar, and pulls a large amount of water out of the air and they hurry to take her to meet the King. 

The king is not a particularly interesting man. Rather it is his sons, and his daughter and mother who interest Sansa. The styling of clothes is different here, looser, and Margaery, the princess, get's Sansa some of the clothing they wear, here a silk which feels better than any cured fur coat could on Sansa's skin. She loves it. 

She meets with Margaery every morning at midday in the middle of the palace. It's a tall place, and there is a large area where Sansa trains with Margaery. She learns how earth bending iid all about foundations, and Margaery takes her outside the gates of Omashu one day, to an entrance to a series of caves where she whispers to Sansa a story. 

They say that Omashu was once two villages, Margaery whispers as the pair lie beneath a great tree near a waterfall, the sounding of the rushing water filling Sansa's ears and calming her. The two villages perched on two mountains, were at war with one another, and so they did not interact with each other. One day, a woman and a man met. They fell in love, and from the original benders, the badger-moles, they learnt how to earth bend. Because they were not allowed to see one another, they created a series of tunnels, and hid in them with each other, finding their way thanks to earth bending, and meeting to enjoy moments with one another. Very romantic, right? Margaery breaks out of her narrator mode to giggle into Sansa's ear.

Sansa nods in response, a smile gracing her face as she imagines the beautiful man and woman. 

But one day, the man did not come. The woman was very worried, and found out that he had been killed in the war between the two villages. In anger, she unleashed a terrible display of her earth bending. However, rather than hurting anyone, she brought the two mountains together, and with the people of the villages, built a new city where they would both live together, and the war would be over, Margaery explained. The woman was named Oma, and the man was named Shu, and so came about Omashu. Do you get it?

Sansa got the idea of the story, and nodded. The man and the woman were the first earth benders, she thought to herself. They were alive before her first incarnation, which was amazing, especially if the story was true. 

Moments later however, they were attacked. 

_

Arya quickly picked up the master's style of earth bending, who told her that he came from a very northern earth bending area, where they lived close to the Northern Air Temple. Thanks to this, his people had often seen the air benders practicing, and bending, and as such had found that although the elements were opposites, they were greatly influenced by the styling of bending the element of air, and so the type of bending he practiced, was a mix of two bending styles.

Due to this, Master Syrio had found that his earth bending was almost like the water benders, due to the mix of change and substance which was the two bending styles. 

Arya thought back to when she had watched the benders in her tribe. Although none of them had ever become masters, they were able to bend enough to defend themselves and help build shelter. She thought back to how they moved lie they were in a dance (perhaps that was why Sansa was always so good at dancing), and extending the water like it was their partner, and when they did on occasion spar, they twirled and leapt, dragging the water around them in ribbons. 

Unfortunately, that was when they were attacked. 

_

"It's the Avatar!" One of the men attacking them called out. 

Sansa immediately recognised him as a water bender from the Norther Water Tribe, and instinctively joined Margaery in bringing up a wall of earth, before running away with her teacher, whose face had turned into one of fear. 

"Who are they?" Margaery asked her, as the pair ran, dodging the men's icy spears and defending themselves. 

"Men from the Northern Water Tribe," Sansa replied. 

"Why are they after you?" Margaery's eyes went wide. "Weren't you just there?"

"There have been frustrations with my own Southern Tribe," sansa replies. "After the old King passed, the Prince took over, and he wished to keep me captive. I escaped."

"Run," Margaery said after a moment, stopping. "Run and I'll hold them back."

"Margaery!" Sansa creed out in protest, unsure as to how she could leave her friend. 

"Go get your things, and head straight to the Fire Nation," Margaery shakes her head. "Away from this place. You have learnt all I can teach you."

Sansa runs.

_

Master Syrio raises the ground up and down beneath the men in front of him, causing them to stumble and loose their footing, and their stance as they prepare to attack. 

"Go little one," he says to Arya. "Run for the hills and don't look back."

"It's the Avatar's sister!" One of the men had called out, and Arya in turn brings a hundred pointed rocks on the men, and runs, grabs her bag with all of her possessions (thankful now that Master Syrio's teaching style involves movement) and runs, moving the earth beneath her to become quicker, and heads for the hills. 

She runs all night, past Omashu, heading towards BaSingSe, and doesn't sleep, doesn't think, because if she does she is going to be thinking about Master Syrio and what must of happened. 

Arya runs. 

_

Sansa heads to the Fire Nation and the Fire Sages teach her. 

Fire is harder for her, being her natural opposite as a water bender, and she must calm herself and think.

Naturally, Sansa is not an angry person, and as they teach in the Fire Nation, anger is how one must learn to fire bend. So she struggles and produces mere whips, especially after she sees the burns on not only the Fire Nation people, but even the Fire Sages. She calms herself out of instinct, as she knows calmness will help all of her other bending, but it does not help her fire bending. 

When a letter comes for her when the Sand Sisters visit the Avatar, on behalf of the king, bringing news of not only her fathers demise, but her brother Robb's, she finds her anger. 

Sansa masters fire bending quickly, far too quickly. 

_

Arya has been running for so long now. 

She works odd jobs, in taverns and inns. She works jobs by the sea and fishes, finding that even though she is not of water herself, she is reminded of home in a time much simpler. 

The fish end up in the hands of some farmer or his wife, and she gets coin in return (having not had much foresight when she left, and only bringing a few Water Tribe coins, which using would mean a certain trail), or they disappear into her stomach. 

She hears about the death of Robb Stark, the boy chief, through word of mouth when she arrives in the Fire Nation, and she curls up in a ball in the bed she rests in that night, and screams into the thin pillow, and sobs like a child, before making a mess of the country side the next morning. 

She leaves quickly, far too quickly. 

_

Sansa arrives in the air temples, and it is hot and deep and she finds that her Aunt Lysa is sitting in meditation in one of the temples, her blue tattoos highlighted by the dusking sun, as a child wanders nearby. 

"Aunt Lysa?" Sansa calls out to the woman who is a stranger to her, her mother's sister. "It's me, Sansa.'

"Child," Lysa rises and greets her introduces her to the air bending master, Petyr Baelish, and her child. 

Sansa realises there is something strange about her aunt, something off and she is all too dependant on the bending master for an air nomad, for a monk, and so she becomes wary.

The bending master, Petyr Baelish is a strange man. He tells Sansa that he knew her mother, and Sansa is very curious as to how. 

He teaches her in a strange fashion, tells her to let go of all of her anger and rage and so Sansa does, because even though she is the Avatar, she is still Sansa and she will do what she is told by an elder (never mind that she herself is plenty elder than any who walk the earth, thanks to her numerous incarnations). 

When news of her mother's absence, her mother's death, arrives, Sansa tears the room around her in a rage, using her earth bending to nearly blow the entire building off of land. She enters the Avatar state, her aunt's son, her cousin, tells her fearfully and she is at once abashed and ashamed. 

Sansa hides herself and practices water bending to calm herself. She's angry and it only halts her progress. 

_

Arya comes across a sword master one day, travelling into the realm of the air nomads, and bows to him. He examines her build, and invites her to his estate for dinner. 

She gets invited to learn how to sword fight, and she insists that she is an earth bender, and she is fine. 

"What happens if you are isolated?" The man asks. "What happens if you are itraped in metal, or on ice?"

She knows what happens then. She has only her brains left, and so she agrees to learn. 

She can throw knives still, but knives are one thing, as are boomerangs and spears. So she picks up the weighty sword the master gives her, and measures it's weight in one hand. It's heavy, gruelling work, but Arya picks it up rather quickly, adapting and when she finds out about her mother, she simply works it out through her duelling with the master's nephew who's visiting. 

_

They have been apart for over two years when they finally meet. 

Sansa is eighteen now, and taller than ever. Her hair is braided down her back in traditional fashion, and despite her residency in the Fire Nation, she wears her summer Water Tribe clothes. 

Arya is dressed like a Fire Nation citizen, in burnt orange pants and a linen tunic in a pale red, which she has knotted with a belt. Her hair has been chopped off, and Sansa let's out a little gasp upon seeing it. 

"So you're a fully realised Avatar now?" Arya asks, sitting down opposite her in a grace that thirteen year old Arya most certainly didn't posses.

"I guess so," Sansa states, shrugging with muscle sixteen year old Sansa most certainly didn't possess. 

Their eyes meet and both realise they are rather like one another. They are pulled to one another, and are constantly following each other. Push and Pull. Tui and La. 

"So I guess you might be needing some help for all of that Avatar stuff?" Arya quirks an eyebrow. 

"I guess I might," Sansa replies.

They leave together, and don't exit any other way from then on.

**Author's Note:**

> possible triggers: implied incest, ableist slurs
> 
> so my first choice was arya as a water bender, because 'WINTER IS COMING' and erego, the whole iceiceice thing, and also in the Avatar world, water represents winter. however, i realised the resentment that could arise through that, and therefore sansa is a water bender, arya and earth. a lot of this also has to do with their personalities - arya is stubborn, therefore earth, sansa is able to adapt and change, therefore water. a lot of this makes sense in my head in this little world, so ask me a question if you don't get it. Sansa is the water bending Avatar before Kuruk. In regards to the whole lack of water bending being taught to a female Avatar, I think it fits? Obviously when katara wished to water bend, she was only taught because of her grandmother, and we never see Yangchen or Kyoshi water bend, although Kyoshi shows each of the other elements with great skill. I think that unless the Avatar appeared in Avatar state to the Northern Water Tribe, we can deduce that the Avatar would have to learn themselves, or find another teacher. 
> 
> Obviously these are my own thoughts, and feel free to ask questions. Please tell me what you thought, as always.


End file.
